Endless Recall: the painful truth

My brother in law Troy says, “sometimes a good idea goes bad, but more often it’s a bad idea that goes bad.”

Perhaps this post will prevent the implementation of yet another bad idea.

And, there’s this, for you personally: in your life, do you want to feel good in the moment, or do you want the truth – even if that truth really, really hurts?

As painful as it often is, I ALWAYS seek the truth and then move outward from there. It’s not heroic. It’s pragmatic. If one doesn’t work with reality as-it-is, life will be a slap-dash fool’s game.

If you prefer to wallow in feel-good fantasy regarding the viability of the ORP’s recall efforts, go ahead and call me anti-Republican and a trouble-maker. It’s OK. Not too long ago the Oregon Republican Party Chairman did just that. But still, I’ve been called worse. And anyway, it’s not the truth about me, at least the “anti-Republican” part.

The trouble-maker part? Maybe. But if so, that’s just a minor byproduct of pointing out the truth.

Here we are, three weeks out from the official failure of the recall petition to remove Governor Kate Brown, and way too many Republicans are still arguing about WHY the petition failed. They thrash back-and-forth in a messy social media blame-game of what must have gone wrong. Distracted – and good naturedly assuming the best intentions of their ORP leadership – they are not seeing the actual reason for the recall effort.

The reality? What went wrong was that the ORP Executive Committee initiated a recall petition in the first place. And now your leadership is talking about a second one. Why? Because for their purposes, the first one succeeded in spectacular fashion and they have every reason to believe a second one would be equally successful.

I’m not being facetious in saying “for their purposes.”

It’s diabolical: An aberrant purpose shrouded by a suspicious proposition, the failed recall petition accomplished precisely what our leaders wanted it to accomplish.

Let’s go one layer deeper to focus on our Republican leadership’s actual goal, not their professed desire to remove Kate Brown or their silly “let’s-send-those-awful-Democrats-a-message” BS.

Get this: The ORP’s recall petition, initiated last July, came directly on the heels of Michael Cross’s effort. Because of this move – deliberate vote splitting by the ORP brass – both petitions were instantly guaranteed to fail. But for the ORP’s Executive Committee top leaders who certainly knew this, failure would be a perfectly acceptable end result.

The recall petition’s actual purpose was not to displace Kate Brown or to “send a message.” It was to distract our Republican base from the upcoming elections for at least four solid months. And yes, if we continue to argue amongst ourselves about why it failed, a huge chunk of us will be distracted/demoralized right through the holidays.

This means that for a total of six months we will have been sidetracked; manipulated into believing the recall effort would remove Kate Brown and would, praise God, solve all our political problems.

For those who initiated the doomed petition, mission accomplished!

And yes, timed perfectly, we’re now about to get another ORP-generated recall-Kate-Brown petition rammed down our throats, thus prolonging chaotic distraction within our base for the NEXT six months, right up to the primary elections.

The ORP Chair’s inane argument for initiating Recall-Part-Deux? “Sometimes you have to fight twice to win once.”

It’s simple leftist political genius: for a solid year, distract the Republican base from focusing on the 2020 primary elections thus insuring the continued Democrat progressive dominance in Salem.

Oh, and in initiating a second go-round, I presume ORP leadership will mention that, in the extremely remote possibility the recall petition succeeds, Kate Brown will stay in office until a special election is called, right about the time of the primary elections next May.

After all the Republican anger and chaos, what do you think the chances would be of winning that special election? You’re right: zero chance. But even if we managed to remove Brown – in the midst of the primary elections, most of which we’ll be losing because we’ve been emotionally preoccupied with these endless recall petitions – we’ll be replacing crazy Democrat governor Kate Brown with equally crazy current Democrat Treasurer Tobias Read…and this will set up Read to be the incumbent Democrat governor in the 2022 gubernatorial race! If you don’t believe this is true, call Republican Secretary of State Bev Clarno and ask her.

Incumbent candidates almost always win their re-election races.

In the chaotic distraction over recall petition efforts that produce bad results no matter their outcomes, here’s the bottom-line goal of the petition promoters (and quietly nodding-in-approval Democrat progressives): Republicans will not be prepared for the 2020 primary elections.

And no question, over the years, primary elections are where we’ve lost the state to Democrats.

Initiate another recall petition now and next May we’ll again have lefty RINO-approved statewide candidates who can’t win their general elections (most recently, think Buehler and Pierce), and in many internal races we’ll have no nominees at all. (In the 2018 elections, 25% of our sixty House races had no Republican general election candidates. Yes, you read that correctly.)

Can you now see that if our ORP leaders want to guarantee continued Progressive Democrat control in Salem – and by their actions and non-actions it sure seems that way – initiating a second recall petition is the proper tact? It makes perfect sense if one accepts the very believable hypothesis that top state ORP leaders don’t give a rat’s butt about regular every-day Oregonians like us. If you truly think this tiny handful of leaders at the tippy-top of the ORP Executive Committee leadership-chain actually cares about you and me, great. Then post your evidence on Facebook so the rest of us can see what we’ve been overlooking.

For those of you who have been thinking a second recall effort is the secret sauce we’ve all been waiting for, take a deep breath and reconsider your position based on the obvious facts, not what feels good in the moment.

And don’t blame me if the above logic distresses you. I’m just the reality-messenger. But then again, feel free to attack me personally if that makes you feel better. I really don’t care. Really.

Bottom-line, we Oregon Republicans have been manhandled by our own leadership, just when they should be laser-focused on the only salvation there is, the upcoming 2020 primary elections. Have you noticed? Notwithstanding the horrible ORP website, never does state party leadership discuss the Salem super-majority problem or give more than lip service to what we need to do to deliver seven electoral votes to President Trump next November.

This ORP recall petition underhandedness is analogous to the tactics DC Democrats are using in their Donald Trump pseudo-impeachment circus. In each case, a dubious premise cloaks a nefarious intent. The glaring dissimilarity? Here in Oregon, it’s Republicans doing dirty work on fellow Republicans.

We can’t allow this second recall attempt to happen.

Please contact your ORP Central Committee/Executive Committee representatives and talk them out of this bad idea that will for sure, turn out bad. Tell them to instead insist that their Executive Committee focus on the only two goals that matter and are actually attainable: removal of the Democrat super-majorities in Salem, and the delivery of seven electoral votes to President Trump next November.

Let’s get that done, and then we’ll deal with the governorship in 2022.
-Sam Carpenter